Deep Well. Living Yoga Blog

For eons, humans have marked the longest night of the year, Winter Solstice (Dec. 21 this year) as a sacred turning point. The return of the sunlight, bit by bit, is a promise from Nature that a new growing season will return. Nature uses Fall & Winter - the seasons when nights are longer than days - to compost and fertilize. It literally devours the remains of the previous cycle to generate the next cycle. These darkest days are essential to Nature's fertility and to our own psyche/consciousness. It is in the dark that gestation occurs. It is in the dark that we dream. This is a highly potent time to examine our values and how we intend to act in accordance with them as the light (and our energy) returns. What "You" do you want to grow in the coming year??

In our modern electricity- and convenience-filled world we do not remember how stressful this time of year would have been without them. Fields lie fallow, what we have managed to harvest and store in the cellar is what we must survive on until the next growing season. In ancient myths, this is the time of descent into the underworld - a time of great uncertainty and coming face to face with our very mortality. It is no wonder that huge celebrations and rituals of celebrating light occur all over the world in the darkest months, and especially in relation to the return of the sun (birth of the Son of God...God of Sun...) around the winter solstice.

Historically, the unique lessons of the dark months were literal and involuntary and put us in direct relationship with the essentials of survival. Facing uncertainty or fear with courageous vulnerability, getting resourceful with what we have on hand, submitting the to greater cycles of nature, and knowing the light will come again...all this fosters great humility, trust and resilience. It is in times of scarcity that we realize the simple joys of being alive, and having food, shelter, and good company.

These days, as part of a conscious life striving to be in tune with nature, we must voluntarily connect with these lessons. Our holiday rituals and celebrations are a reminder, and there is more. We must take time to get to nourish our depths, to find the riches in the fertile soil of our being. It takes a whole season to do this, and gets deeper and more nuanced each year of our lives.

Acknowledge: Uncertainty and fears especially around survival (health, wealth, death) are heightened this time of year. Take some time to acknowledge your feelings without condemning them. As animals aware of our mortality it is natural to experience fear and uncertainty. Recognize and honor your feelings. Perhaps talk about them, or write about them to help move through them. Paradoxically by owning our vulnerability we become stronger. True courage comes from trusting the process.

Resource: Find ways to nurture yourself deeply and connect with what is most meaningful to you. The dark months strip us down to essentials. Find time to connect with nature, with the God of your understanding, with friends, family or teachers who nourish you. Find joy in dancing, singing, making art, cooking...

Dream: Spring and summer will come again... what would you like to pursue in the next "growing season"? What would you like to plant? Prepare the metaphorical soil in your life now. Rest, dream, inquire, dig deep! (P.S. New Years is NOT really the best time to start those big new plans. It is still the middle of winter then! Plan towards mid-February or March when the energy of spring is really underway!)

Meditate: Learning to pause and spend time resting in the vast nurturing space inside is the most important tool for healing from fear, relaxing into uncertainty, connecting with the sacred, and gaining clarity on the path ahead. In the loving gaze of meditation, fears fall and dissolve like leaves composting into rich soil. Nurturing Source (the nature of your true nature) is all around you, in you, through you and AS you.

If you would like to learn how to experience the Nurturing Source in meditation, I am available for one-on-one sessions.

Pluck the squash warm from the vine,and celebrate the harvest time.Do not mourn the fallen fruit,now on the ground to nourish the root.We've bloomed and we've bled,we'll commune with the dead,curl up in the darkest hours.Compost your fearsthrough the end of the year,and awake with a heart full of flowers.​-- Anami